


The Sound of Pulling Heaven Down

by roachpatrol



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Black Romance, Codependency, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Torture, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Psychological Torture, Quadrant Confusion, Red Romance, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture, Unhealthy Relationships, Xeno
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 22:55:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roachpatrol/pseuds/roachpatrol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each time you fear that they won’t leave you with enough supplies to piece your partner back together. Each time it’s a near thing. Supplies are necessarily dear to these creatures, and the two of you are an investment with uncertain returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Pulling Heaven Down

**Author's Note:**

> For the Kinkmeme prompt: _Eridan and Sollux are imprisoned together and both tortured for an extended period of time, during which the only thing that keeps them from shutting down or dying or otherwise completely losing it is the other._
> 
> Thanks to uA, biichama, vast derp, and a whole buttload of other dudes I guess too for cheering me on my hideous way.

*  
 _  
I'm reaching farther than I ever have before  
Leaving all who broke your heart upon the shore  
I may be some sort of crazy  
We may be some sort of crazy  
But I swear on everything I have and more_

_You make the sound of pulling heaven down..._

\--Blue October, _[‘Pulling Heaven Down’.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnskaYaWHjU)_

*

 

Eridan hits the ground like so much raw meat. You have been waiting for this noise for what feels like hours: you go still all over, perfectly trained, perfectly meek, perfectly perfect. If you’re not, they’ll only break him further.

The second thing to hit the grating is a leather bag. You hardly twitch, but something in you unclenches. Each time you fear that they won’t leave you with enough supplies to piece your partner back together. Each time it’s a near thing. Supplies are necessarily dear to these creatures, and the two of you are an investment with uncertain returns.

There’s a wet chitter, the disgusting raspy hiss of fur settling itself, bone-beads clinking, the low scrape of a long bald tail as its owner turns around and makes its way out of the cell. You strain to hear, every clawscratch, the echo of the footfalls in the tunnel, the rattling clang as the door is closed and locked.

A breath out. A breath in. You bolt across the floor, snatch up the bag, fall to your knees beside Eridan’s body. He’s alive, every time, of course he’s alive, but your bloodpusher claws its way up your wind tunnel every time, you have to put your hands to his own gulping headstem each and every time and feel for his pulse. You think if he died they wouldn’t bother to bring you his body. They’d just eat it. Supplies are dear in this lonely shitheap, and it would serve you right.

You run hands over his body. Contusions, scratches everywhere. Their claws are terrible. You don’t have enough antiseptic for all the places he’s been split open. You lick the shallow cuts clean, blood and dirt sour on your tongue, hope it does the job. You get so little proper food even this terrible taste of something burns like fire in your mouth: you think of them eating his body, peeling the tender flesh from his bones, the rich meat of him, and something long-broken inside of you cracks into even finer pieces.

You draw out the small flask of antiseptic from the bag, unscrew the cap. Set the cap back in the bag. You can’t risk losing the cap, because if you can’t cap the bottle the whole thing’ll just evaporate and then where will you be? When will they give you a new one? You spread what you dare to use with careful fingertips across worst of his infections and trust to luck and a highblood’s immune system for the rest. He’s so far gone. He’s _so_ far gone. You were both so small to start with, stupid wigglers playing hardass cluckbeast with each other, it’s not fair, you’re just kids. Sweeps away from anything like old enough to deal with this. You think if only you were older, if only you were better... you stop thinking. You just feel.

No broken bones this time: his cracked rib is nearly healed from last week. Thank god. Thank fuck. Thank something. You pull him upright, your psionics shaky and blind. You’re shaky and blind. He only gives another weak, watery gulp.

They have beaten him in a shallow tub again. When they beat him dry he comes back with broken bones: when they electrocute him in a deeper tank he comes back as a jellied mess of tremors. Instead he hangs midair in your grasp and confusedly tries to breathe water, over and over, collapsing the pressure of his airsacks each time his abused gillcovers flutter open. This sends him into an awful gagging gallows-dance as he strains and strains for breath, until he’s too weak, until his gills sag closed again and some of the air he gulps down stays in his airsacks long enough to diffuse into his bloodstream. Then he rallies, revives, and the gashes between each rib flare open again.

You reach into the bag, hoping for a miracle, and your hand finds a roll of bandages, the peeled gummy-sude skin of the disgusting caveworms that live deep at the center of this cosmic trashbore. You nearly cry with gratitude. They have been watching you, what you do, how you put him back together each time they return him to you. They have been noticing. You take a deep breath: in, then out.

You unwind a long soft sticky length, pass it around Eridan’s thorax. Once, twice, three times, four.

You cinch each loop tight, pinning the gillcovers down. He moans a little. This must be hell on his battered ribs, the raw and weeping lashmarks across his back. You don’t actually know if he’ll die if he keeps this stupid gill-gasping up, but eventually he’ll get anoxic enough to pass out, he’ll go into shock, his vascular system will slow to a godawful limping crawl and when they come to take him away again they will drag him across the rough grate floor till he loses all the skin on his shoulder and hip. This has happened before. If you have anything to do about it it won’t happen again. Instead you bind each gillflap tightly closed and listen to him whine out the grating, high-pitched cry of a wiggler for its lusus. If you could die from sheer misery-- if you could die from how awful it is just to listen to him sob like a pupa-- then there would be no one at all to patch him together, and they would eat him.

You miss your lusus. He, no doubt, misses his. 

“Sollux,” he whines, finding words, as you tuck the rest of the bandages away for later. “Sol? Sol! Please, someone--”

“I’m here,” you say. You can feel the displacement of air as he thrashes, reaching out for you, and you lower him as gently as you can to the floor. You tuck the bag beneath his head. It’s nearly empty, no fit kind of cushion but his back-swept horns are chipped enough and deserve all the padding they can get.

“Come here,” he says thickly. “Can’t see a fuckin’ thing in this dark.”

“Me neither,” you say.

“Ha,” he says. “Funny man.”

You sit beside him, rub your hands briskly together till you can feel the tingle of overenergized electrons discharging heat and light-- he sighs, turns his head with more confidence. He looks at you. His hands come up to find your face, stroke slow and intimate, over your useless eyelids. His greatest triumph, and some part of you, you think sentimentally, might always hate him a little for that. You kiss his palms: you could almost pretend you were back on Alternia, that you were the one who’d beat him this broken, only the place where his anterior digits should be burn like dry ice against you. The Rats ate them right off, the first time they took him away. They said they were checking. They said he tasted so good. They said if you didn’t behave...

His hands are clumsy against your skin, and cold, and the weals of scar tissue are too slick, too leathery. You let him guide you down to him, in the dark, you kiss him. His teeth are chipped and oversharp, his tongue ragged, his lips a ruin. You kiss him very carefully, cataloguing each hurt. You are so terribly awash with pity for this poor stupid bastard that your legs tremble with it, that your guts churn with it, that you are afire with how ferociously you are in loathing of everything that has ever dared to happen to him. You want to kiss him till this whole awful place turns to dust around you and blows away. You want to kiss him till you both die. You want to kiss him forever. 

“What do you think she’s doing right now?” he asks finally. You don’t pull away from his mouth, and the words are nearly lost against your tongue. You pull back with some difficulty, roll your faces together, your nose against his. You can’t stop touching him, the pockmarked stretch of his chest, the scar-slick waste of his shoulder, the lacy tatter of his aural frills. He rocks weakly into your hands everywhere you ground yourself, and it’s unspeakably reassuring.

“She’s brushing her hair,” you say thickly. You slide a hand between his legs and he sighs, quietly, and thumbs the line of your jaw. You say, “It’s morning, and she’s had a long day. She knows we’ll be back soon, you and me, both of us, and she’s looking forward to it but she isn’t worried. She brushes her hair until it’s like a spill of ink in the water, glossy and perfect, she’s beautiful and happy. She takes her jewelry off and stacks it on the bureau, getting ready for sleep, the necklaces and bracelets-- the pearl ones you strung for her when you were seven, last sweep, remember, for her wiggling day, she wore them specially. She’s going to dream about us all being together again.”

“Sounds nice,” he murmurs. “Nnnh, Sol--”

“It’s the truth,” you insist. “That’s what’s she’s doing.”

“Sol, please--” his hips hitch up. You palm his bulge more firmly, tease your fingers along his tip, work on getting him flushed as quickly as you can. He hardly has the resources for this anymore, but if there was nothing for him but pain and more pain and even more pain one of these times he might lie there on the floor and just -- just stop. And it isn’t a trial to do this for him, either. It’s one of the only sweet things you even have anymore.

You stroke the squirming length of him, swing your legs over his. Hands on either side of his chest, propping yourself up over his body he can’t handle any extra weight. He reaches up, strokes your shaggy, greasy hair from your face -- then, exhausted, rests his hands on your thighs. His fingers pet you softly, and god help you but it’s sexy, this delicate touch.

“Sol,” he murmurs. You kiss him, the unbroken stretches of his throat, his chest, where you can find them, coaxing what pleasure you can from what’s left of him. Your bulges twist together, slick and good. He breathes raggedly, hitching up each time you press down: you trade little shots of pleasure back and forth, winding tighter, he cries out. Soft, but -- responding, coming back to himself. He squeezes your legs, tilts his head back. You dare a nip beneath his tattered ear, a harsher grind of your hips, and that’s enough. He shudders, wordless and pleased, and goes slack beneath you.

“Enough,” he says, breathless. “You’re -- that’s enough.”

“Fuck off,” you say, press your lips to where you’d bit him. There’s a little spark of fresh blood there and it makes you feel like shit.

He palms you, where you’re still wet and hungry for him, his big cold mangled hands and you want to melt for the pity of it. He squeezes you firmly, like you want him to, like he’s learned how. You gasp and he laughs. It’s an echo of itself, a whispery pathetic shell of arrogance, but it brings you to your elbows and knees over him, dazed and stupid. He tucks your head under his chin, works you hard, and you shudder out of all control.

“Come for me,” he murmurs, “come on, let me fuckin’-- _do_ this for you, Sol, gorgeous, come on--”

You find the edge, slip over it. You’re still healthy enough that your release slicks the space between you, his hips, your legs, a paltry handful of material. Hardly enough to coat the bottom of a filial pail, if even that, and _he’s_ been coming dry for a while. By all merciful rights the two of you would be culled for this perversion, this non-performance. But it feels too good, and there’s precious little anymore that feels anything but bad. 

And he’s alive, beneath you, squirming as you slide down his body and lick him clean, he knees you in the head when you tease at his sheathing bulge.

“Cut it out, stud,” he says tiredly, and pulls you up along his side. He’s big and cold and a shameless leach of your body heat. With your ear pressed to his shoulder you can hear the slow tide-like swell and gurgle of his vascular system.

You lie together for a time, drifting. You’ve got a day or two, now, to yourselves: to lie together and talk, and doze, and wait for them to throw in a few tasteless lumps of mushroom, and pray for Eridan to heal just a little faster.

“No one’s coming for us,” he finally says.

“Shut up.”

“You know it. I know it. They can’t. They don’t even know we’re here.”

“Shut _up_.”

He starts to cry, quietly, hopelessly. You hate these swings of his: you have long since run out of the emotional capacity to do anything more than hate yourself, but Eridan still teeters wrenchingly back and forth from fury to sorrow.

“Why the _fuck_ won’t you just let me die?” he asks. “You selfish fuck, if you’d just let me _go_ \--”

You press his jaw shut with just your trembling fingertips, and he swallows a sob. He goes meek and quiet and small: he’s so well-suited to submission, by now. There isn’t much left of him anymore. There isn’t much left of either of you.

You lay your head on his battered chest. 

He’s all you have left. He’s the world. You wound up here with this contemptible douchefuck and they beat him and beat him and here’s you huddled against his side, blind and dumb and disassembled. Here’s your self-loathing, here’s your useless pity, here’s your endless and awful stupid animal gratitude that it’s Eridan Ampora they haul out of the cell to beat on and not you, this slavering poisonous satisfaction that you can still count to ten on your own fingers and it is _this_ that you truly cannot imagine surviving. This greedy thankfulness. This dread. If they came to haul you away, one of these times, to come at you with the iron pipe or the live wires or their knifelike incisors, what would you say? What the fuck would you even do?

They’ve never tried. Eridan they haul out, they haul back, they degrade, they destroy. You they make _witness_. They know what they’re doing. _You_ know what they’re doing. And still it’s working. 

You don’t know how much longer you have before there’s nothing left to say that there was ever anything of either of you at all.

His breathing evens out, his pulse slows. When you kiss him a final time he doesn’t respond.  
You get to your feet. The darkness spins, horribly, around you: it’s been a long time since you’ve done more than crawl, and for a second you don’t think you can maintain it. But you take harsh breaths between your teeth, fighting the vertigo, and move your feet. One step, another, hanging puppetlike and scrabbling for purchase from your own psionics. Deep breaths. You’re pretty sure you know where everything in this little cell is by now.

The door is rough under your hands, sloppy badly-patched metal. It’s basically just a slice of some junked ship’s hull, chained in place. Everything on this blasted scrapheap is junk. You’re junk. You were junked the moment you and your kismesis tumbled, still biting and kicking, through the wrong end of a transportalizer experiment and this is just you, giving up. Giving in. Accepting what you should have known from the first fucking minute.

You knock on it, quietly, carefully, with your knuckles. You don’t hear a damn thing from the other side but you know they’re listening.

“Take me,” you say. “I’m ready to cooperate.”

*

“Come now, baby,” says the Rat Mother, “Don’t look so sad. You’re doing the right thing.”

“As you say, Mother,” you say thickly. She only laughs, adjusts a squeaking, squashy rat-wiggler on one of her teats. The smell in her chamber is choking, a peppery mammalian stench of milk and musk and sweaty fur.

“What are your terms, youngling?” she asks gently. “We might as well cut to the meat, here, I know you’re going to try to hold out for something.”

“I want Eridan ransomed,” you say as steadily as you can. “I think we must be on the very edge of the Empire, but, I think I can set you some secure ‘net coordinates to contact--”

“Eridan? Who’s -- oh, the fish? Baby, baby, darling, I’m sorry, but no deal. You’re blind as one of my own kits, you think we don’t know you can’t make us a ship yourself? Ask for something we can give you.”

This dashes your plans more than somewhat. You crouch there, in the stinking dust of her brooding chambers, and try not to cry.

“Food,” you say finally, thickly. Desperately. “If we’re to cooperate -- and, and we will, Mother -- we need more food. We need meat. I can’t fucking think, he can’t fucking build. And if any of you touch him again, eat on him, beat him, I will-- I’ll-- just-- don’t you dare fucking touch him again, any of you.”

“Done and done,” the Rat Queen says. “Oh, baby, we were going to do all this anyway, the minute you came around.”

“...Oh,” you say. “I. Thank you.” You’ve sold out for a grand total of _jack shit_ , and it is this thought that finally forces tears out of your useless eyes. You press your fingers to your mouth, your face, as if you could hide your shame.

She laughs, soft and somehow _sympathetic_ , and waves her four-fingered paw at the guards.

“Take the poor little flat-faces off to the Builders’ Warrens,” she says. “Give them any materials they ask for. They’re _family_ now.”

You rise painfully, your feet slow and unsteady on the cavern floor, trying to keep your psionics to yourself.

“Hey, Troll,” she says gently. “Baby, listen,” and you stumble to a halt. She says, “I want this to work out, sweet youngling, you get me? I’m not unkind to my own, darling, and I think we’re really in a position to make something wonderful here. But if either you or your fish set so much as a whisker out of line, by all that is grand and good will we make what we’ve done to you two look like _foreplay_.”

There is an acrid burning in your eyes, your throat. Your bloodpusher. It tastes like agony, and like-- stupidly, horribly, abominably-- like hope.

“Yes, Mother,” you say.

*

You know when Eridan wakes by the way he bursts into your new workroom.

“Sollux!” he roars. “Sollux, where are you--”

“Here.”

He makes his way towards you, one barked shin at a time. He’s got excellent dark vision for a Troll, good for the thick gloom of the deep seas. It does him precisely no amount of good in these completely lightless warrens. You raise a glow for him, and he kicks his way through the scrap metal faster. He touches your face, carefully, then slides his arms around your shoulders. He’s trembling, breathing in hoarse, harsh barks.

“God, when I woke up and-- you weren’t-- scared me half to fuckin’ death, Sol, I don’t mind sayin’. Where the fuck are we?”

“I sold out,” you say. “They moved us to chambers in the Builders’ Warrens. We’re going to build them the ship.”

He flinches. “What,” he says.

“Did I fucking stutter? I sold out.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. Now, obviously I can’t do much raw construction on my own, but--”

“No, stop. Stop fuckin’-- just stop! Sol, this is crazy. Let’s go-- we can still go back to our cell. We’ll ask ‘em nice, and they’ll take us back.”

You laugh. It feels awful. “Are you even listening to yourself? Last night you were begging me to let you die and now you want to go back to that. Back to your tub. Back to your whips. Back to the knives, Eridan, don’t tell me you’ve come to like it when they carve your skin off in _little lacy bits!_ Do they beat you in the head, to make you want it? Do they give you a reacharound after they finish playing cagematch with your ribs!?”

“It’s-- Sol-- this is-- this is treason,” he says, like somehow you don’t know.

“I know,” you say.

“No, Sol, evi-fuckin’- _dently_ you don’t know, _this is treason_.”

“Haul me up in front of the nearest legislacerator and I’ll hang with a smile on my ugly face, Eridan, ask me if I give a fuck at this point!”

But he’s backing away from you, slow little steps. From the way his vasculars are pounding in his chest, from the way he shapes himself small and hesitant as a yolk-eared pupa with day terrors, you are coming to realize that he has never considered giving in, not once, not even incidentaly. This is the first time he has so much as _thought_ of giving them what they have been slowly _killing_ him over.

It makes something in you wind tight with a strange and terrible satisfaction, and the rest fall to grieving pieces.

“I’m not doing this,” he says shakily. “This is -- this is preposterous amounts a fuckin’ treason, Sol, I am absolutely positively havin’ no flippin’ part of it. How could you even -- how can you think of doing such a thing? It goes against the Empire. It goes against _everythin’ we are!_ ”

“You know, I kind of hoped you’d just say ‘Sure, Sol, whatever you think is best’!” you grit out, too brightly, too tightly: he flinches. “But instead I guess we are going to have ourselves a practical demonstration of why I am right. Watch closely!” You take two steps backwards, and turn your back on him. Then you ram your head against the nearest hullwall as hard as you possibly can.

Pain splinters through you, bright-hot and immediate. You hurt from your horns to your toes, an awful howling storm of pain. Eridan’s at your side in a moment. You drive him away with a lash of power, you can feel him strain against you.

“It’s not so easy when you’re the one watching, is it?” you snarl. “Is it?”

“Sol,” he says brokenly. “Oh, please, no, what are you _doing_ \--”

You reach out for the rough stone again. There’s wetness on your face: you’ve abraded the thin skin of your frontpan and your blood pours down over your eye socket, your cheek. Here’s your answer: you can take pain as well as anyone else can. It’s welcome news.

“Sol!” he yelps, clawing the air. “No, stop!”

You smack your head again. Then again. It’s like you’ve opened a sluicegate inside your thinkpan and the pain is flooding in through it in relentless waves and under it, under the driving force of that pain all your rage and self-loathing gets wiped down to sheer sensation. The physical pain is a relief, is an externalization of everything you can’t deal with, everything you can’t say. 

Finally you hit something just the wrong way and your power gutters out in the blast of how much it hurts: Eridan drives through the gap, grabs you by the throat. He drags you away, into the middle of the room, wrestles you into the cushioning curve of his own bony frame as you thrash.

“It’s so fucking -- easy to just lie there -- and -- and take it,” you scream. “You selfish _fuck_ all you had to do was _let_ them--”

“Sol,” he’s crying, “Sol, Sol, please, no, Sol, stop it!”

“One of us had to put their fucking foot down,” you scream. “And I did! I fucking stopped it! They’re never touching you again, Eridan, I sold out, I stopped it, me! I did! I did it for you! And you don’t get to fuck that up for me now, you contemptible piece of shit excuse for a fucking Troll, how _dare_ you!?”

He sobs convulsively against your shoulder, and he holds you like you’re somehow precious. You roll him over hard and merciless and he splays out beneath you. You can barely even fucking think through the pain and fury.

“Apologize,” you demand. “You fuck everything up, go on, you always have and you always will and I want to damn well hear you say you’re sorry!”

“I’m sorry,” he moans out. It sounds like a mantra. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Don’t hurt yourself again, I’m so sorry.”

“You’re going to live. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah, Sol, anythin’--”

“And you’re going to get better.”

“Anyfin you say--”

“You’re going to help me here. Me. Not your flipping finny _ethics_ , not the fucking _Empire_ that’s going to grind on whether we die here or not, not fucking -- not even fucking _Feferi,_ she doesn’t give a fuck, if she gave a fuck we’d have been rescued, she’d have found a way if she really _cared_ \-- there’s no one you fucking owe one wet fuck to anymore. No one but me, because you’re mine, because I don’t have anyone else. Now say thank you!”

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“Good,” you say. You sit back on your heels, on his hips, you touch your pouring headwound. The blood runs warm and hot over your fingers. “Shit, I can’t afford this. Give me some of your bandages.”

He claws at his bound gills, clumsy with haste, and rips off a long loop. He wads it awkwardly in his mangled paws, as if he wants to dab at you with it-- you grab his wrist and he stills.

“You don’t know how to do this,” you remind him, and take the strip. It goes twice around your seeping abrasion and you tie it off in a small, neat knot. You probably look ridiculous-- the thought sits weirdly in your thinkpan, a fascinating irrelevance. You lick your palms a few times, rub at your bloodslick cheek.

“Here,” Eridan says, and tries to sit up. “Sol-- I-- may I? I can do that. Can’t I?”

You hesitate, a long moment.

“Please?”

“Alright,” you say, and let him up. “Alright, but... Gently.”

He takes your chin with an agonized tenderness, as if you might shatter. He’s shaking all over, his breath wet and stuttering still with tears, and he licks you from jaw to temple. You wish he was warmer, you wish he was the overclocked lowblood mutant here with, what, twenty more sweeps to waste himself in. If that. Eridan could see the outside of millennia if you have any say in it, and you do, you are determined, but it makes him so uselessly cold.

“More light?” he asks. “I want to see you. If I, if. If it’s okay.”

You rub your sore palms together. He makes a choked little noise and kisses you. He kisses you over and over, till everything tastes of blood and purple tears. It stirs something black and hot and thoroughly unwise in your guts, it’s been so long since he was well enough to oppose you and some part of you still wants him to try...

“Stop, stop,” you say, and he does.

“What?”

“I’m so tired,” you confess. “I’m just-- Eridan, I’m so _fucking_ tired.”

“They gave us a nest,” he says slowly. Coaxingly. “It’s all rags and things, it beats the floor upright silly. Come and sleep with me, okay, we’ll both have some proper shut eye and think things over, okay? Sol?”

“Tomorrow we start in on the ship,” you say firmly. “You won’t cross me again.”

“Maybe we can talk about that tomorrow, when you feel better,” he says slowly. “See, you got your point a view, and, and -- and I can definitely _respect_ that, but I think maybe, if you, like, listened to some reasonable other points I might be able’a present--”

You thrash in his arms, try to push your way free -- you don’t have many more hits in you to waste, but if he’s going to give you more shit this soon you don’t have a fucking choice. You have to tamp down his flaring sense of control _now_. If you continue your rivalry now, here, you’re both dead. You need to crush him, break him to your own rein. You manage to clock one horn off the ground, and the scrape of keratin against cement is enough to make him scream for you. You kick him off, wriggle, you slam down -- something goes crack. Fire blazes down your spine and you feel so fucking heavy, like pain actually weighs something, like you’ve filled yourself up with black water. 

Eridan gets the crook of his elbow around your throat, his other arm tight around your hips and you whine, furious, awash with adrenaline and throbbing shards of agony. The slide of his bare skin against yours is electric, incendiary, you want to fuck him, to _fight_ \-- it’s been so fucking long since anything gave you a real _challenge_ , and the way he’s grabbing at you feels far too welcomely caliginous.

“I’m sorry!” he’s babbling, over and over, and it finally pierces through the haze. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, whatever you want, Sol, I promise, I’ll do it! Shhh, shh, please, don’t, Sol, I’m sorry, just don’t, shhhh. Please. Please stop.”

You subside, incrementally.

“We’re traitors,” you hiss. “Say it. I’ll snap your fucking horns off, Eridan, _say it_.”

“We’re--” he chokes. “We’re traitors. Okay, Sol, I get you. We’re traitors, we’re done.”

“Tomorrow we’re going to start on their ship.”

He says, “Anything you say.”

“Right answer, Eridan.”

You let your head rest on his shoulder, and go limp when he picks you up. He shouldn’t be -- he’s deeply fucked up all over, he’s still got that cracked rib. But if he’s a sorry collection of bones, by now, then so are you, and you’re dizzy and leaden all over with what you have just done to your head, to your partner, to -- all of it, you’ve just bundled your whole life up and slammed it till it went crunch, you’re exhausted. You let him carry you.

The nest feels amazing after however long it’s been of sleeping dry on dirty grating. Rags and things, tufts of fur and packing foam. It might as well be sopor. You curl up in his arms and feel as if you’re floating, giddy and aching.

“I’m sorry,” he’s mumbling, petting your hair. “I’ll be good, Sol. Anything you want. Never make you mad again, I promise, I swear. Just sleep, please, go on.”

You breathe out, in, out.

The pain takes you away.


End file.
